offended. Let not truth however be facrificed to a wish to conciliate. If a man have escaped, he must be of a character truly extraordinary and memorable. And even fuch a man will not have paffed entirely uncontaminated. He will bear upon him the ftamp of his occupation, fome remnants of the reigning obliquity, though he fhall be fortunate enough to have redeemed them by virtues illuftrious and fublime.

Thus then we have fucceffively reviewed the manners of the trader, the lawyer, the physician, and the divine, together with the military and naval profeffions. We proposed to afcertain which of thefe avocations a wife man would adopt for a regular employment for himself or his child; and, though the refult will be found perhaps to contribute little to the enlightening his choice, but rather to have caft the gloom of ftrong difapprobation upon all, we may however confole ourfelves at leaft with this reflection, that, while engaged in the enquiry, we have furveyed a confiderable portion of the occupations and characters of men in fociety, and put together materials which may affift our judgment respecting the economy of human life.

ESSAY

the calamity, fit unmolested in their cabinet, while those against whom the fury of the storm is directed, are, for the most part, persons who have been trepanned into the fervice, or who are dragged unwillingly from their peaceful homes into the field of battle. A foldier is a man whofe bufinefs it is to kill thofe who never offended him, and who are the innocent martyrs of other men's iniquities. Whatever may become of the abftract queftion of the juftifiableness of war, it seems impoffible that a soldier fhould not be a depraved and unnatural being.

To thefe more ferious and momentous confiderations, it may be proper to add a recollection of the ridiculousness of the military character. Its firft conftituent is obedience. A foldier is of all defcriptions of men the most completely a machine. Yet his profeffion inevitably teaches him fomething of dogmatifin, fwaggering and felfconfequence. He is like the puppet of a fhowman, who, at the very time he is made to ftrut, and fwell, and display the most farcical airs, we perfectly know cannot affume the most infignificant gefture, advance either to the right or the left, but as he is moved by the exhibitor. This fingular fituation gives to the military a correfpondent fingularity of manner. The lofty port of a generous fpirit, flowing from a consciousness

of

of merit and independence, has always fomething in it of grand and impreffive. But the swagger of a foldier, which it cofts him an inceffant effort to fupport, is better calculated, in a difcerning fpectator, to produce laughter, than to excite

awe.

The failor, if he is to come into the lift of profeffions, fo far as his character is warlike, falls under the fame objections as the foldier, with this.. aggravation of the nature of his purfuits, that they ufurp an element which, by itself, man is scarcely able to fubdue, and compound a scene ftill more infernal, than that of a battle to be decided by land.

Where the failor is not a military character, he is frequently a mercantile one, and the merits of mercantile pursuits have already been eftimated.

But he labours under one disadvantage peculiar to himself. He paffes his existence in a state of banishment from his fpecies. The man who is fentenced to refide in New Holland or Siberia, may improve his faculties, and unfold his affections. Not fo the man who paffes his life in a coop, like a fowl fet apart to be fatted. Men, accustomed to fpeculate upon the varieties of human nature, can have no conception, previous to the experiment, of the ignorance of a failor.

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failor. Of the concerns of men, their pursuits, their paffions, all that agitates their mind and engroffes their attention, he is almoft as uninformed, as an inhabitant of the remotest planet. Thofe expanfive affections, that open the human foul, and cause one man to identify himself with the pleasure and pains of his fellows, are to him like the dialects of Nineveh or Carthage. And what renders the abortiveness of his character the more glaring, he has vifited all countries, and has feen none. He goes on fhore for half an hour at a time, and advances half a mile up the province upon which he anchors. If he return in the close of life to his native village, he finds himself unspeakably outftripped in fagacity and knowledge, by the poor peafant, whofe remoteft researches have never led him further, than to a country-wake or a neighbouring fair.

It is to be remembered that, through this whole difquifition, we have been examining different profeffions and employments, under the notion of their being objects for the contemplation of a man, who would choose a destination for himself or his child. Our bufinefs therefore lay entirely with their general tendency. If there be any extraordinary characters, that have efcaped the prevailing contagion it has been our purpose to detect, they have no right to be offended.

offended. Let not truth however be facrificed to a wish to conciliate. If a man have escaped, he must be of a character truly extraordinary and memorable. And even fuch a man will not have paffed entirely uncontaminated. He will bear upon him the ftamp of his occupation, fome remnants of the reigning obliquity, though he fhall be fortunate enough to have redeemed them by virtues illuftrious and fublime.

Thus then we have fucceffively reviewed the manners of the trader, the lawyer, the phyfician, and the divine, together with the military and naval profeffions. We proposed to ascertain which of thefe avocations a wife man would adopt for a regular employment for himself or his child; and, though the refult will be found perhaps to contribute little to the enlightening his choice, but rather to have caft the gloom of ftrong disapprobation upon all, we may however confole ourfelves at leaft with this reflection, that, while engaged in the enquiry, we have furveyed a confiderable portion of the occupations and characters of men in fociety, and put together materials which may affift our judgment refpecting the economy of human life.

ESSAY